Reuters
The White House is reportedly weighing proposals to designate the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as terrorist organizations. According to reports from Reuters and The New York Times, several U.S. government agencies have already been consulted about both options. Leaders of the Revolutionary Guard are already on a government terrorist list, but many Republicans have argued that the whole group should be added as a means of sending a message—the Revolutionary Guard is Iran’s most powerful security entity. But the action, as well as designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, would likely complicate U.S. relations in the Middle East. The Muslim Brotherhood, which officially renounced violence decades ago, is one of the most influential Islamist groups in the region. The Council on American-Islamic Relations objects to the proposals. “We believe it is just a smoke screen for a witch hunt targeting the civil rights of American Muslims,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the council. A terrorist designation for the Muslim Brotherhood, he argued, would “inevitably be used in a political campaign to attack those same groups and individuals, to marginalize the American Muslim community and to demonize Islam.”